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That ad does not only autoplay, but autoplay with LOUDEST sound. It killed my Mendelssohn mood.

Hello! My name is Paul, and I deal with the ads on the site.

I just came across your posts about the Dieselstormers ad, and I'm going to look into the situation with a) the apparent auto-playing audio and b) the resource-hogging. Neither have been an issue on our own PCs, but such is the nature of the personal computer that everyone has different experiences.

While I'm here, I'd like to say a big thank you for keeping your blockers off. Your viewing of the ads means that those talented and handsome RPS writers are making an living income. Obviously it has to work both ways, so I will absolutely look into these issues for you.

There's an (apparently) new ad player that seems to have appeared between "Read our Finest Words" and "Respond..." that seems to endlessly cycle through a loop of different commercials, gradually bogging down Firefox's performance as it goes. It's muted at first, but at a certain point it craps up my browser so much that it unmutes for about half a second each time it switches to a new commercial.

I just came across your posts about the Dieselstormers ad, and I'm going to look into the situation with a) the apparent auto-playing audio and b) the resource-hogging. Neither have been an issue on our own PCs, but such is the nature of the personal computer that everyone has different experiences.

While I'm here, I'd like to say a big thank you for keeping your blockers off. Your viewing of the ads means that those talented and handsome RPS writers are making an living income. Obviously it has to work both ways, so I will absolutely look into these issues for you.

Cheers!

Paul, you sound like a nice chap, so I'm sorry if this comes across as overly harsh, but the ads have become increasingly intrusive over the last year or so.

I appreciate you looking into these issues, but if videos are autoplaying, which they seem to be for many people including myself, is over the line. Personally I'd rather there weren't any embedded videos in ads at all.

I also understand it's difficult to balance ads that provide a decent income stream with the needs of moany content parasites like myself, but in my opinion RPS had managed that pretty well over the years (at least from my perspective, maybe not so much from theirs).

My adblocker will be on until I trust RPS to advertise responsibly. You used to, you don't so much anymore.

Something is bringing my computer to its knees any time I have multiple tabs open. And it's a good computer (recent i7). Win8, Firefox 30 and 31. I suspect that it's the "watch mojo" video thingie, which has been the only constant during the time I've experienced this problem, although if there are other ads with reused script, I wouldn't know.

Edit: Not a bandwidth issue; I notice the impact when it starts lagging entry in text boxes. Probably the same as Dave L's problem, because come to think of it, it does take a while before the problem occurs, but when it happens it's impossible to miss.

Paul:
I realise that ads are a necessity, and that the page wide "pop under" ads seem pretty industry standard. But can you guys at least pay a little attention to page weight.
I know we're in the era of megafast broadband, but some of us still have to deal with slow connections (whether due to our location, or being on a mobile data plan) and slow PCs (usually due to the office). Sometimes the RPS homepage is getting up to 3-4Mb of data, which can often kill crappy PCs or take ages to load.
A bit more compression, or lower bandwidth options, and no autoplaying videos would be appreciated.

I appreciate you looking into these issues, but if videos are autoplaying, which they seem to be for many people including myself, is over the line. Personally I'd rather there weren't any embedded videos in ads at all.

Absolutely, it's definitely over the line. We're still looking into the root cause of the sporadically auto-playing video in the Dieselstormers ad. We think it was a little issue caused by how certain browsers parsed the flash in the ad. Once we work it out, we certainly won't let it happen again.

We try to keep videos in ads to a minimum, but some devs that we work with like to have them; sometimes gameplay is hard to convey using just a static image. Where possible we prefer to embed a Youtube vid, as this is both less hardware intensive, and we have greater control over autoplaying, autoplaying with sound (a huge no-no for us), etc.

Originally Posted by BillButNotBen

Paul:
I realise that ads are a necessity, and that the page wide "pop under" ads seem pretty industry standard. But can you guys at least pay a little attention to page weight.
I know we're in the era of megafast broadband, but some of us still have to deal with slow connections (whether due to our location, or being on a mobile data plan) and slow PCs (usually due to the office). Sometimes the RPS homepage is getting up to 3-4Mb of data, which can often kill crappy PCs or take ages to load.
A bit more compression, or lower bandwidth options, and no autoplaying videos would be appreciated.

Duly noted. For the ads for indie games such as the two currently running, we don't tend to build the ads ourselves, rather let devs themselves (who are very often RPS readers too) build their creative. We do have a guideline of around 200KB for ads, but I know it can sometimes exceed this, so we're going to be paying more attention to the size of ads in future.

Thanks for your feedback guys, it's much appreciated, so keep it coming. For general feedback, it's best to keep it to this thread, but if you're browsing the site and see something that urgently requires attention, you can get me at paul[at]rockpapershotgun[dot]com.

At the end of the day, I'm a huge RPS fan myself and I don't ever want anyone else reading the site to have a bad experience, so let's help each other out.

Something is bringing my computer to its knees any time I have multiple tabs open. And it's a good computer (recent i7). Win8, Firefox 30 and 31. I suspect that it's the "watch mojo" video thingie, which has been the only constant during the time I've experienced this problem, although if there are other ads with reused script, I wouldn't know.

Edit: Not a bandwidth issue; I notice the impact when it starts lagging entry in text boxes. Probably the same as Dave L's problem, because come to think of it, it does take a while before the problem occurs, but when it happens it's impossible to miss.

Same thing here - a lot of the full-background ads on RPS drive my browser to the brink of blowing up (I usually use Firefox, but I just noticed Chrome is acting up too).

We think it was a little issue caused by how certain browsers parsed the flash in the ad. Once we work it out, we certainly won't let it happen again.

Damn you Paul, stop being so nice & reasonable - it's much harder to hate you this way (I can see why you got the job).

In all honesty, I think you nailed it with the dirty "F" word. I'm quite happy to deal with ads of most stripes, but as soon as you bring Flash in it's game over for me. For your consumers you've just crossed a line that I think a lot of people view as too much.